Is a ‘stiff-upper-lip’ mentality partially to blame for today’s mental health problems?

Prince William blames the stiff-upper-lip mentality of his grandmother’s war generation for today’s mental health problems, at a recent summit.

Strength, dominating positions of power, the hunter-gatherer, the idea that strong and silent is alluring/attractive, the “show no weakness” bravado of heroes in our media.

In many of these macho images, there is little room for showing poor mental health. The men who are most revered in society (famous, wealthy, successful, powerful) are not always ready to admit their struggles in public and that can leave the “average bloke” feeling uncertain about speaking out.

It is great that the tide is turning for men. When Prince William and Prince Harry began talking openly about their own mental health challenges, it gave the nation an incredible lift. One by one, more of these revered men are coming forward and openly addressing mental health; footballers, politicians, actors, anyone can talk about it. We don’t consider that these men are weak or failing by speaking out, in fact, they are the brave ones.

Prince William who is 37, appeared for the first time at Davos, claimed that today’s generation learned to bottle up problems from their parents and grandparents who lived through World War II.

He added: ‘Completely by accident they passed that on to the next generation, we all learn from our parents we all learn from how they deal with things.

‘So this whole generation inherited that this is how we deal with problems we don’t talk about them.

‘I think that now there’s a generation here that are realising this is not normal and we should talk about them. We should get over it.’

Suicide is the most common cause of death for men aged 20-49 years in England and Wales.

What are your views?

Should we be more emotional and show our feelings or is the stiff-upper-lip mentality still appropriate for today’s generation? Should we suppress emotions at risk of our mental health?